She never learned to manage her own emotions, as adults are capable of doing. She never learned to regulate her feelings or to cope with disappointment. She never learned that she can craft her own emotional life somewhat, and develop successful strategies for managing her own happiness.
Instead, she just figured early on in life that she’d get it from somebody else.
She developed a habit of feeding off of the emotional energy of others. And she began to experiment with the thoughts and emotions of others, to see if she could get them to act and to say the things that suited her own emotions the best. And she learned to manipulate them, and to capitalize on whatever were their own cognitive and emotional weaknesses.
And it was fun. It gave her something to do. And if she caused them pain, she didn’t have to feel it herself—not too much, anyway. And if they got mad at her, she could just walk away. Or better yet, she could try to invent ways to make them apologize, and to take the blame for her sins on themselves.
And this is the life she made for herself, living through surrogates, best she could manage—playing out her life as if by remote control in the hearts and minds of other people. She was something like a parasite. Something like a virus. Something like a cat toying with its prey. Something like a vampire. But whatever she was, she wasn’t normal. She wasn’t mentally healthy. She wasn’t sane.
And she hurt many people, making their lives a living hell—all because she would not grow up herself. Whether from fear or stubbornness or some other dysfunction, she simply wouldn’t grow up.
And as it happens, she was born to parents who didn’t have much good sense about raising a child to maturity. They thought kids were supposed to be kids, until they just weren’t anymore. They had no idea that the process of maturation is to begin and birth, and that it can be deliberately facilitated by good parents.
And her school was not run by keen educators, but by government. And their goal was mostly just to run her through the system. And her church had no particular interest in the maturation of its members.
So, now she is grown, and as emotionally immature as a toddler in many ways, but with the body, intellect, and means of an adult. She is miserable within her own soul, and a menace to society. And she counts what is wrong with her as the fault of other people, whom she resents for not doing better to keep her emotional void filled up.
And this all makes me wonder about myself, and how much I might feed off of the emotions of other people from time to time. And if I do, I sure hope that I fill them back up, so they’re at least as good as when I found them—if not better—and certainly not drained from the experience of being around me. And I think I had better take a good look to find out for sure, so that I can change my behavior as needed.
